A whistleblower who helped expose the Wirecard fraud, one of Europe’s largest financial scandals, has criticized Australia’s approach to protecting those who report corporate misconduct, describing the country’s culture as inhospitable to whistleblowers. Pav Gill, former head of legal for Wirecard Asia Pacific, said Australia trails behind other jurisdictions in providing adequate safeguards and support for employees who raise concerns.

Gill’s comments come in the wake of a recent controversy involving KPMG Australia, where a whistleblower was allegedly mistreated after attempting to highlight the misuse of confidential client audit documents by senior partners. Rather than investigating the claims, KPMG’s leadership reportedly targeted the whistleblower, shielding the implicated partners. Gill said this pattern of “shooting the messenger” is common across many organizations globally, reflecting a defensive mindset that prioritizes protecting management over addressing substantive allegations.

Speaking from his base in Singapore during a visit to Australia, Gill pointed to the nation’s comparatively small and interconnected business community as a factor exacerbating this problem. “There’s a culture of don’t snitch, don’t rat on the boys,” he said, noting that while this attitude exists elsewhere—including Germany and Malaysia—it is especially entrenched in Australia.

Gill, who now runs Confide, a governance, risk, and compliance software company, emphasized that many organizations focus on collecting whistleblower reports without having thorough procedures to address them effectively. “The problems happen after,” he said, highlighting the importance of transparent, impartial handling of such reports to foster trust.

In 2018, Gill was involved in the internal investigation of Wirecard before becoming a whistleblower himself. The German fintech, once valued at approximately €24 billion, collapsed after revealing in 2020 that nearly €1.9 billion purportedly held in Asian accounts was non-existent. The scandal triggered widespread investigations, leading to arrests of Wirecard’s former chief executive, chief operating officer, and other top executives. Jan Marsalek, the fugitive COO, remains at large in Russia and is believed to have ties to Russian intelligence.

Gill also criticized audit firm EY for its role in enabling Wirecard’s fraudulent financial claims. He argued that audit and consulting firms should be held to standards equivalent to those governing corporations rather than relying on legal exemptions. He called for stronger accountability within the audit industry, noting that many firms simultaneously offer whistleblower services without independent oversight, a potential conflict of interest.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) has identified addressing audit misconduct as a priority following the KPMG affair. Gill recommended that whistleblower reports related to audit firms should be managed by independent teams or external parties to ensure impartiality.

Contrary to some proposals, Gill does not support the establishment of a national whistleblower agency in Australia, describing such bodies as often ineffective and susceptible to bureaucratic constraints. Instead, he favors enhancing legal protections for whistleblowers. He cited new laws in Japan that criminalize retaliation and public identification of whistleblowers as a positive example, though he suggested that imprisonment should be reserved for extreme cases involving physical threats or criminal retaliation.

Gill also recounted that journalists who reported on Wirecard faced intimidation, underscoring the risks whistleblowers and investigators confront in exposing corporate wrongdoing.